Research On Aesthetic Experience Of Virtual Reality In The Horizon Of Heidegger’s Phenomenology

The definition of virtual reality is that a computer-generated virtual environment simulates reality with interactive, immersive and imagery characteristics. By means of sensor devices that send and receive multi-sensible information, a person is enabled to interact with and manipulate the virtual environment which even makes users feel that they are truly present in the simulated world. For the border between reality and virtual reality was not as clear as before, the authenticity of virtual reality becomes warmly argued issues aware by philosophers, technical professionals, as well as many sociologists. Under this background, following the road of Heidegger’s inquiry into the essence of technology, established on the fact that virtual reality reveals the multiple presences in intuitional means, the nature of virtual reality is demonstrated as art phenomenon for which reveals the invisible Sein concealed within the existing modality in intuition. By re-explaining the connotation of aesthetic experience in the context of Heidegger’s Phenomenology, it is a reasonable methodology for applying conception of aesthetic experience in interpreting virtual reality’s technical practice for further research on virtual reality.In virtue of method of historical and logical analysis, by clarifying the logic hidden behind the history of aesthetic experience category, it is illuminated that the concept of aesthetic experience inherited the traditional thoughts and extended from Husserl’s Phenomenology. Traced backwards to Ancient times, Greece philosophers initially argued that artworks were copies of idea, and aesthetic experience was low-grade sensible cognition. In the mid of1900’s, influenced by traditional rationalistic philosophy, aesthetics was primarily recognized as a scientific field regarding sensible experiences, and aesthetic experience was discretely either referred to sensible perception or to transcendental sensible perceptivities. In the virtue of Husserl’s theory of intentionality, by reducing sensible perceptions to perceptional consciousness, the category of aesthetic experience was extended to the range of conceptual intuition. Inheriting Husserl’s Phenomenology and re-defining the pursuit of Sein as the duty of Phenomenology, aesthetic experience was attributed to the visualization of invisible Sein. Correspondingly, three kinds of Sein phenomenon in the sight of Da-sein endows aesthetic experience with three hermeneutic dimensions, that is aesthetic experience presents respectively as:a mutual configuration between body and space revealed in embodied existence format; a mutual configuration between emotion and space revealed in emotional existence format; a participant and holistic artistic practice in the dialogue and denomination activities revealed in narrative existence format.By comparative method, the concept of virtual reality is analyzed from technology externalism and technology phenomenology. Initially, simulated virtual reality is deemed as a computer-generated artificially virtual environment, which can hardly cover the multiple research orientations of virtual reality. By development of virtual reality, it was impelled by the co-operation between technological experts and artists. The concept including sensible reality or cyber-space proposed by artists represented their understandings of virtual reality from the level of perception. To clarify the philosophical meanings of virtual reality, the concept of truth and possibility have been analyzed, which provided a foundation for explaining virtual reality in triple ways:an ideal welt consisted of ideas and concepts; a simulated environment on the basis of mathematics; a sensible space generated by computer technology. The third understands of virtual reality points to the sight of Phenomenology. However, traditional rationalistic dualism requires the virtual reality establishing itself on the objectivity of subjective experience which incited a long argument in history, leading to opposite positions held by technical experts and artists. In the sight of Husserl’s Phenomenology, virtual reality is lied on the coherence between behavior and perception framework, which hanging the truth of virtual reality. Eventually, following Heidegger’s mind, it is examined from the entity; entity’s existence and being, revealing that virtual reality can be viewed as art phenomenon for its unfolding invisible Sein in intuitive way.From the perspective of Heidegger’s Phenomenology, by attributing aesthetic experience to Sein’s avalanche, which provides an undergrounding theory for interpreting virtual reality with multiple understandings of Sein phenomenon. In details, on the basis of embodied existence format opening the mutual configuration between body and space, virtual reality is presented as embodiment phenomenon, in that virtual technology constructed according to users’perception-behavior system participates in organizing the spatial structure. The embodied virtual reality can be reduced to removing distance and positioning functions of perception. And the aesthetic feature of virtual reality can be concluded as the engagement between perception-behavior system and virtual technology, which is a process in that a series of virtual technology would be accustomed to users’perceptual and behavioral modality. Secondly, from the emotional dimension where emotion and space are mutually configured, virtual reality is constructed as a ground for effective communication which points to dual spatial phenomenon of virtual reality, that is in one side virtual reality presents as an integrated whole including human and computer co-existence; in another side virtual reality emerges as a site for nihility itself unveiled. Thirdly, in the narrative dimension derived from temporal living modality revealing the mutual configuration between language and space, virtual reality can be reduced to a re-configuration process that disengages the closed virtual technology system through dialogue and denomination activities. Re-configuration of virtual reality presents mutual constructive relations between language and technology which redefines the form, location and scale of virtual reality.Interpreting virtual reality with three hermeneutic dimensions not only strengthens the basic phenomenon underlays aesthetic status, it also brings out several reflections on this concept’s limitations. By re-interpreting Sein in the virtue of nature, it is proposed that the aesthetic experience theory identified with oneness and harmony can be constructed at all. The term "at hand" is referred the corporal existence as instrumental activity, which forms the embodiment phenomenon that contains initially indifferent aesthetic status. Furthermore, by separating perceptual affection from general emotions regulated by nihility, it is legible that emotion contains an unrealistically free aesthetic status. By decomposing virtual reality into a transformational process of the happenings and production of languages, occurrence of language becomes an intuitionistic phenomenon contains primal harmonious aesthetic sense. However, the concept of aesthetic experience reinterpreted within the context of Heidegger has three drawbacks:firstly, the aesthetic experience based on the phenomenon of embodiment takes the risk in regulating the behavioral formality; secondly, beyond the physical perception, a holistic aesthetic status engendered from emotion can hardly overcome the immaterial vanity; thirdly, the artistic practice where imagination solicited by aesthetic experience is separated from moral practice. In light of the organism by interpreting the meaning of Sein, the harmony and oneness featured aesthetic experience theory is systemized in three levels:on the level of perception, aesthetic perception erasing the difference between entities should be adapted to an unified and organized scenario; on the emotional level, aesthetic interests erasing the difference between entity and existence is required to accommodate the society or nature environment; on the level of narration, aesthetic experience erasing the difference between existence and Sein in the transformative process of dual spatial constructions should be accordant to the harmony and oneness of artistic and moral practice. After all, the theory of aesthetic experience proposed on the basis of harmony and oneness identity theoretically indicates that virtual reality research should orient its future in reconstructing a co-existing and harmonious relationship between human and nature.